I hope everyone enjoyed their long weekend! We get a bank holiday Monday here for May day. I got someone to fill in for me at the organ on Sunday so I had three whole days off. Unthinkable. It turns out that I really needed it. We didn’t really go anywhere but we did lots of little things. It doesn’t feel like I did a lot of sewing but I must have, because I finished this blouse. I’m putting it with a finished-in-April skirt.

The blouse is a vintage pattern that I made again with modifications. The skirt is self-drafted. About the blouse!

I used 2m of Tilda cotton from Rubanesque. It is so pretty I literally became weak at the knees when I set eyes on it. I knew it had to be a spring blouse.

I modified the collar to make the tips rounded because I felt it would suit the print better.

I also adapted the cuffs to make them rounded and open. I had to pare down the shape of the sleeves because I didn’t want them too wide without a placket and closure. I sacrificed the tidiness of seaming the sleeves and then enclosing the seam into the cuffs for sewing the cuffs flat with all the top stitching and them seaming the sleeves. It looks fine from the outside. If I were to do it again, I would probably suffer through topstitching the cuffs with an already seamed sleeve.

The buttons I salvaged from another unwearable blouse. Now, for the skirt! I dug out my drafting notes from five whole years ago and drafted this up. I pity my younger self as I took the drafting course without ever having sewn any sort of clothing! It made a WHOLE lot more sense this time around. Unfortunately, when I was cutting out my pattern pieces I managed to chop off the side seam allowance and only discovered when I could barely get the skirt on. Thankfully I was able to salvage it through some manipulation of the darts but gosh! Never again! I basically made up the pleat bit by holding my muslin up against me and saying, ok, I’d like my pleat to go from about here to here and be about this long. Turns out, that’s kind of the way to do it.

My mum helped me get my pleat to behave itself. I did myself no favours in the way I’d hemmed it but I will know for again!

I actually made this skirt to go with my cape. The skirt I originally made was just the wrong shape. As you can see, it goes very well now with the straight skirt.

It is a peculiar outfit! It is a bit dull for a bright May day such as today. Maybe later in the summer with hot pink tights? I should probably just wear the cape with jeans also – although I put it on Sunday and Alb asked me if I was going to meet Batman :/ He does not see capes as a proper item of clothing unless for dressing up. Isn’t that what clothes are for anyway?!

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I bought some tracing paper in The Cloth Shop at the weekend and while there, I spotted this fun ribbon.

I think I’ll use it with one of the awesome fat quarters I bought at Pippa Blue to make a cover for my overlocker. It was only €1.80 for a metre.

And speaking of bang for your buck, I picked up some dark brown embroidery floss and one of those plain canvas totes from Aldi. Last night, I printed off the free moustache sampler from Sublime Stitching and got started. Just in time for Movember!

My amusement, clearly, is as endless as my embroidery floss.

I stalled out on the blue top I’m making because I don’t have enough interfacing for the collar. So I dug out the tracing paper and got started on something I’ve been meaning to do for ages: revise my old skirt drafting notes. I got a straight skirt drafted and mocked up in about an hour. I love wearing skirts but I’m bored making the same pattern so I have a few simple ideas I want to draft up.

Because I got that done so easily, I dug out an old blouse I’d stopped because a detail wouldn’t come right for me. This was obviously user error because it was easy to solve and I should have a neat little navy blouse with white collar for the weekend.

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I am in love with mitered corners. Yet another simple technique from 1, 2, 3, Sew.

I had two small squares left over in this fabric but I ruined the first one by making four 65-degree corners. This, on the other hand, is most pleasing. I acquired some fat quarters and am sewing a simple present using this technique. Perfect for those days when you want to make something but don’t really want to think too hard (which was yesterday).

I got a pile of navy Karisma from the Constant Knitter yesterday in the post and cast on immediately for my Dad’s Christmas jumper. He has worn the first one to death. The second was much loved but went missing in the hospital. If someone had the nerve to steal it – well, I hope they’re too warm. The following months can only be described as a mourning period and whether he’ll admit it or not, I know he wants a jumper for Christmas.

On the upside, I have all my notes from the last one so casting on was simply a matter of making a swatch and jotting down a few preliminary sums. I have a month to the day for this one so time is of the vanilla essence.

I finally pushed on with my top pattern yesterday evening. I move slower than if I were taking a class because sometimes, I feel like I’m reinventing the wheel a little bit. I get stuck and have to think about things, look back over my old notes and try to figure it out for myself. Which, though slow, is probably better in the long run.

This isn’t going to be perfect. I think the armscye and waist shaping will be ok but the neckline, I’m not so sure about. Hoping to test on muslin tomorrow.

Thank you all for weighing in on the skirt issue! I didn’t realise so many people didn’t like school uniform skirts. My mum used to dress me in a kilt, when I was quite small, that was straight across the front and pleated around the back. I suppose I had that idea in the recesses of my mind. In the end, it was Mary L’s comment that the very pleated one would be impractical for cycling that swayed me! However, with the more A-line skirt, I’m not sure how well the bulk of three pleats would sit. It would be pretty heavy. I have subsequently come across this version which I think is a nice compromise and satisfies that bit of nostalgia, too. The more I think about it, I like the idea of a straight cross-over front with the movement of the pleats around the back. I get to keep the traditional elements of the buckles and the kilt pin. And, as you can see in the link above, the pleats in the back are tapered down from the waist band a fair bit so there’s a nice tidy shape without the extra hassle of a yoke.

So I’m going to sew the top first and then start the skirt. Exciting!

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I had to get a yellow fever vaccine last night because we’re going to South America for our honeymoon, and while I was in town I swung by Rubanesque to see if they had any trims suitable for my top. I found two contenders and was swaying more towards a delicate, shiny, pale trim but the shop assistants convinced me otherwise. I think they were right.

I hemmed, pinned and tacked last night so my only job this morning was to machine sew the lot together.

The back shows a good example of needing a better fit. I did think about it. A few darts wouldn’t have gone amiss.

That said, it’s not the most fitted of tops. I didn’t want to go the route of having to figure out a closure.

I am really happy (and surprised) with the fit of the sleeve.

While I was tacking the trim to the hem, I figured I should tack the facings down. It worked well and you can’t even see my tiny pinprick stitches from the outside.

The fabric cost me about €5 and the trim cost €10.50 so all in all, pretty good bang for my buck. I learned so much from drafting the pattern and can still see places that need tweaking: the angle of my bust dart, for example, was not so good, and I could do with closing the shoulder dart a bit more. And of course, adding some darts on the back would be nice. These are all easy adjustments I can make on the next one. I would like to keep the width of the neckline but make it rounder and add a flat peter-pan collar. Like if I found a solid navy and added a navy collar with a lace overlay. Yummy!

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Hello again! The course in Switzerland was brilliant. It was an action-packed ten days but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I had great energy when I got back but it all caught up with me at the weekend. Anyway, I’m back to my old self today. Before I went away, I started drafting a basic bodice pattern. I had a metre of some pretty flowery cotton that didn’t cost me very much and thought it would make a good experiment.

I got as far as tracing off the front and back and making up a muslin. It needed a few adjustments so I left it to another day. Yesterday, I got the muslin back out, put it on and used a soft pencil to mark in a few adjustments: lower and widen the neckline and move the darts. I adjusted my pattern pieces and made up another muslin. Much better. Another quick adjustment to the neckline and I was ready to cut it out of my fabric.

While I was laying out my pieces – and boy, was it tight! – I thought that I should probably consider facing the neckline. I had thought of just popping some bias binding on the neckline and armholes but where’s the fun in that? I used my front and back pieces to trace off some facings and laid them out with the other body parts. This in itself was great practice. My facings fit perfectly but my 5/8″ seam allowance made life a bit tricky around the curves. Next time, 1/4″ would probably be better. I found notching around the curves helped a lot and the facings lie flat when I have it on. I stitched them to the seam allowance and then just zig-zagged the edges.

That was all quite straight forward and something I had had some experience with before. But drafting a sleeve cap? That was new territory. I understood the theory from knitting, of course, but it was very interesting to go back to my original draft and trace off what I needed for the sleeve. Shoulders are most peculiar!

For a start, it looked far too big so back I went to my muslin and tried it out. It fit perfectly! But it was a bit baggy at the underarm. So for the second muslin sleeve, I lopped off what I thought needed to come off, but it affected the circumference of the armscye too much and it didn’t work. I didn’t have any more muslin left for another sleeve so when I cut out the pieces from my fabric, I left the armscye circumference the same but reduced the width of the sleeve immediately after that. For the most part, my notches fitted together.

All that remains now is to hem the body and the sleeves. The body is on the short side because I was restricted by how much fabric I had. I was thinking it would be nice to hem it with an extra strip of lace to lengthen it a little.

PS: I should probably add that there is no way I am pulling these patterns out of the air – I bought this book a while ago and find it fantastic.

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